The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  Behind the bar, a burly man with a long, bib-like beard stood cutting up a javelina carcass with a stout cleaver. The bar was comprised of three whipsawed planks laid across beer kegs. The voices of the other men were a low murmur below the wooden plunks of the barman’s cleaver.

  Sartain pulled his head back from the window. Taking the rifle in both hands, he ducked under the window frame and slogged through the mud to the front. He stopped at the corner.

  Before the hitch rack, Buffalo’s sorrel gave a start, pulling back from the rack as it turned its gaze to Sartain and whickered.

  Mike pressed a finger to his lips, shushing the beast. He met the sorrel’s miserable gaze. Who shot your master, Buck? And why?

  Where’s Ubek—if he was ever here?

  What about Phoenix?

  Sartain wasn’t getting any answers to his questions standing around out here staring at the roadhouse’s sagging front porch. Squeezing the Henry in both hands, he headed for the door.

  Chapter Three

  As Sartain stepped onto the half-rotten stoop fronting the roadhouse, he looked down at the rough pine boards.

  Several sets of fresh mud tracks angled from the steps to the front door, glistening faintly in the lantern light falling from the front wall’s single window.

  Sartain followed the steps to the doorframe, over which a beaded curtain had been closed to keep out the rain. He swept the curtain back with one hand, holding the Henry straight out from his right hip, and stared over the batwings.

  Chop-chop-chop came the solid reports of the bartender’s cleaver. Chop-chop-chop. The man, spying Sartain in the doorway, halted the cleaver and stared at him, narrowing one eye. He was fat, with long, cottony hair falling to his shoulders, while the top of his head was bald as a plucked chicken and of a similar texture. The end of his long beard was stained with the blood of the javelina he was butchering.

  The barman glanced at the four men sitting at a table on the other side of the narrow room. They seemed intent on their card game, none glancing at Sartain.

  The apron looked back at the newcomer. His cheeks flushed, but he gave a casual nod. “Come on in outta the rain, feller. I got meat aplenty roastin’.”

  Sartain said nothing. Rifle aimed straight out from his hip, he stared at the card-players who still hadn’t turned toward him.

  “I always roast a pig on a rainy night. The weather tends to drive the prospectors in from their diggins. I’ll probably have a full house by noon tomorrow!” The apron smiled, but his small eyes remained edgy as they darted back and forth between Sartain and the card-players.

  The Cajun canted his head slightly, slitting one eye.

  Curious.

  If these were indeed the crew that killed Buffalo, they seemed in no hurry to ventilate Sartain.

  He cast a quick glance behind and around him, then lifted the Henry’s barrel and stepped inside, dropping the curtain back into place behind him. The four at the table—a roughshod crew if he’d ever seen one—all wore pistols on their hips. From his angle, he could see only two faces—one Mexican with mare’s-tail mustaches and a steeple-crowned sombrero, and a half-breed with belligerent blue eyes, long black hair, and a knife scar down the entire right side of his face.

  None were Ubek.

  Sartain stretched a glance to the rough-hewn second-floor balcony, the railing built from peeled pine poles. There appeared to be four or five small rooms up there. Ubek could be in one of those, but Sartain doubted he was. Jeff was a New Orleans businessman, and these five just didn’t seem cut from Ubek’s fancy Southern cloth.

  Unless, like Buffalo, Jeff was dead . . .

  “No food,” Sartain said, resting the Henry’s barrel over his right shoulder as he turned casually and sauntered to a table near the front of the room, keeping the ticking wood stove between him and the tough-nut card players.

  They wanted to play it like poker, he’d play it like poker.

  Let them make the first move . . .

  “Bring a drink.” Sartain set his Henry on the table and kicked out a chair. “Maybe a deck for some solitaire.”

  “Sure, sure.” The bartender nodded, set his cleaver down, and scrubbed his hands on his bloody apron. “Whiskey and solitaire. Sounds like a good way to spend a stormy night.”

  As he brought the bottle and a glass, one of the men at the other table sang in a desultory, dissonant tone, “Oh, Susannah, I’m comin’ home to you . . . to fornicate in your old pop’s barn.” He spread his cards on the table. “There you go, Alejandro. There’s that jack you were lookin’ fer.”

  He laughed.

  “Shut up, gringo pig, or I put out your other eye!”

  As the bartender glanced warily at the gamblers, he set the bottle and shot glass on Sartain’s table.

  “No, you shut up, ya stinkin’ bean-eater, and toss that gold thisaway!”

  The winner of the hand guffawed, glancing casually between two of his compatriots and Sartain as he puffed the fat stogie in his teeth. When Sartain met the man’s glance, the man dropped his one good eye to his own table and continued singing his nonsensical song.

  The other hard cases threw down their cards, several groaning, the half-breed complaining there was only one whore in the place, and a skinny one at that.

  The bartender stood before Sartain, rubbing his hands up and down on his apron and shuffling his weight from one foot to the other. “Uh . . .”

  Sartain glanced up at the man. “Somethin’ wrong?”

  “Uh . . . well . . . I was hopin’ maybe . . . you’d pay up front?”

  Sartain glanced at the hard cases, one of whom was shuffling the cards, then returned his gaze to the apron. Obviously, the man didn’t think Sartain would be around to pay him later.

  The Cajun smiled, stretching his lips back from his strong white teeth, then casually reached into his shirt pocket. He flipped two gold pieces onto the table. “Leave the bottle.”

  The man nodded and tried another nervous smile, then shambled back behind the bar, where he dropped the coins into his cashbox and resumed chopping the javelina.

  When Sartain raked his gaze from the bartender to pour a drink from the bottle—it was likely brewed out back with snake venom and panther piss, but he doubted the barman stocked his favorite brand of tangle-leg, Royal Oaks bourbon—he caught the half-breed’s furtive glance. The big breed quickly looked away, flushing slightly, and Sartain calmly picked up the bottle and splashed whiskey into his shot glass.

  Somewhere upstairs, a woman laughed softly, intimately.

  “Those whoremongers are havin’ a real good time,” said one of the hard cases as he threw several coins onto the table. “I’ll see your five, Cayuse, and I’ll raise you fifteen.”

  “Christ, McDade, where in hell you get this kinda money?”

  “Some men work fer a livin’, you lazy bean-eater.”

  Chuckles.

  The man called Cayuse cussed and said something Sartain couldn’t hear.

  Sartain sipped his whiskey and kicked out the chair beside him, then crossed his boots on it.

  How did these men know about Ubek and Phoenix?

  Why did they want Sartain dead? Maybe they didn’t. Was there someone else here, separate from this crew?

  The Cajun took another sip of his drink and absently shuffled his cards. He had a feeling he’d find the answers to his questions real soon if he kept his mouth shut. Keeping the card players in the upper periphery of his vision just beyond the smoky wood stove, he laid out a game. The Henry repeater lay across the table’s far right corner, in front of the whiskey bottle and shot glass but within easy reach when he needed it.

  Outside, the thunder rumbled infrequently. In the windows to Sartain’s right, lightning flashed once every five minutes or so. Upstairs, the woman groaned with pleasure as bedsprings squawked.

  The bartender had raked the chopped meat into a stew kettle and sat back on a high chair, rolling a cigarette. His eyes continued to dart to the har
d cases’ table, his pupils dilated. His hands shook as he built his smoke.

  Sartain had just set down a greasy eight of clubs when one of the outlaws made a soft popping noise with his lips. Someone else snickered. The white man called McDade—red hair, bowler hat with a feather in it, and long, bushy sideburns—elbowed him hard.

  “Ow!” raked out the man who’d made the popping sounds, grabbing his arm and choking down a laugh.

  Sartain shuttled his glance back to his cards. Holding the deck in one hand, a single card in the other, he stared hard at the four of clubs. His jaws tightened, and he fought back the burn welling up from his gut.

  Buffalo was dead, hanging by his neck outside in the storm from a mangy tree, and the hard cases were laughing about it.

  Not for long . . .

  Sartain snarled as he flipped down the card. In the corner of his right eye, something moved. He turned his head that way. An arm had snaked down from an unused chimney hole above the bar. The fist of the arm gripped a Schofield .44. The barrel was angled toward Sartain.

  The Cajun threw himself forward, slapping his left cheek to the table and making the cards bounce as flames stabbed from the belching six-shooter.

  Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang!

  The reports rocked the room as the slugs sizzled about Sartain’s head like lightning, one plunking into the wall behind him, the other three chewing wedges from the table on either side of his splayed hands.

  One of the hard cases threw his head back, guffawing. Sartain kicked his chair back against the wall. Clawing his LeMat from its holster, he flung himself forward and dropped to one knee.

  The shooter had withdrawn most of his arm from the hole and was trying to work the pistol out as well. It had gotten stuck on the edge of the hole, and the hand frantically jerked it. The hard case on the other side of the wood stove was still laughing when Sartain fired three quick rounds into the ceiling around the hole.

  The laughter stopped abruptly.

  Upstairs, a man cried, “Aye, caramba!”

  The hand in the hole released the .44, which tumbled onto the bar. There was a loud thud as a body hit the floor above, and the warped wooden slats around the hole shuddered, sending dust sifting over a large jar of pickled pig’s feet at the bar’s right end.

  Sartain didn’t see the thick red blood dribbling down through the bullet holes in the ceiling.

  Shouts rose to his left as all four hard cases moved at once, throwing their chairs back and bounding to their feet. Several twisted toward Sartain as they filled their hands with iron.

  Sartain swung the gun toward the crowd and emptied it, one shot flying errantly while one clipped an ear and the other plunked through the middle of the half-breed’s chest. The half-breed stumbled straight back from the table, dropping his arms and his chin to stare dumbfounded at the hole in his striped wool poncho.

  At the same time, Sartain dodged two bullets as he slipped the LeMat back into its holster and grabbed the Henry off the table.

  The whiskey bottle shattered as Sartain thumbed the repeater’s hammer back and again dropped to a knee. Two men fired at him at once, the bullets slicing the air on both sides of his head to shatter an unlit bracket lamp on the wall behind him.

  As the redhead in the feathered bowler extended a long-barreled Starr .44, gritting his teeth around a brown-paper cigarette, Sartain fired two more shots and then levered the Henry quickly before diving left.

  McDade’s slug whistled through the air where Sartain had been standing and crashed into the same bracket lamp that had been hit before.

  Sartain’s shots blew the top of one man’s head off while plunking into a chair another man had thrown himself behind. Sartain rolled off a shoulder, took quick aim at a shadow sliding through the heavy powder smoke, and fired.

  “Christ!” came the bellow as a big man in a deerskin vest grabbed his ruined shoulder.

  A gun popped twice from the other side of the wood stove, and Sartain kicked down a table to absorb both shots.

  “Sartain, I presume?” shouted an Irish-accented voice that likely belonged to the redhead. “No way out of here, boyo!”

  Shadows moved through the gun smoke, boots pounding the puncheons, spurs jangling raucously. Three guns thundered—a rifle and two pistols. The near-simultaneous flashes spread out across the room before Sartain.

  The Cajun ducked as the slugs slammed into the table, one punching through the wood and slicing a neat furrow across the top of his right shoulder.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, Sartain raised his head, snaked the Henry’s barrel over the top of the table, and fired through the smoke, two shots plunking into the floor and a table, the third spanging off the iron stove with an ear-ringing clang.

  “Got ye now, ye son of a bitch!” The Irishman’s voice punctuated the shots.

  “Who are you, and why’d you kill Buffalo?” Sartain bolted to his feet, then fired blindly into the heavy, pungent powder smoke to his left and sprinted forward.

  Two shots barked at him, pounding the front wall. A third clipped his neck. As he neared the bar and lofted himself into a dive, a bullet seared across his left thigh.

  “Shit!” he complained as he flew over the top of the bar, kicking the jar of pickled pig’s feet, which plunged from the bar and landed with a strident crash, instantly filling his nostrils with the smell of pork and vinegar brine.

  He landed hard on his left shoulder and hip, pain lancing him. He twisted around, glanced to his right. The barman was cowering on hands and knees, looking sour.

  “’Preciate the warnin’!” Sartain exclaimed sarcastically, clamping a hand over his bullet-burned thigh.

  The barman just covered his ears and shook his head fatefully, as though awaiting the inevitable.

  Chapter Four

  The Irishman’s voice boomed from the other side of the bar: “Sartain?”

  “What?”

  “Yep, that’s him, boys!” the Irishman bellowed, laughing.

  Sartain yelled over the top of the bar, “You chicken-livered sons o’ bitches got me at a disadvantage!” He pumped a fresh round into his Henry’s action.

  The Irishman only laughed and said, “And we’re about to kick you out with a cold shovel, Mr. Revenger, sir!” He laughed again.

  Sartain shifted his knees to avoid pickled pig brine. The bald, bib-bearded barman sat with his back to the wall, one leg curled beneath his butt, his giant belly and chest heaving, his terrified face streaked with sweat.

  “Sorry, mister,” he groaned. “They said if I warned you, they’d kill me and burn my place. Kill my whore.”

  “No need to apologize,” Sartain raked out through gritted teeth, pushing himself to his knees while pressing a fist against his wounded thigh. “They’re probably still gonna kill ya and burn your place.” He winced. “Killers of this stripe don’t leave witnesses.”

  The barman groaned.

  Sartain clutched the Henry in both hands and edged a look over the bar. Two figures moved slowly toward him about six feet apart.

  They stopped suddenly. Guns flashed and popped.

  Sartain ducked back behind the bar as the shots chewed up wood from the bar planks and pelted the back wall with slivers.

  Sartain pressed his back to the bar, easing his butt to the floor, clutching the Henry straight up and down before him. Sweat streamed down his cheeks, dripped off his curly, black hair, and speckled the floor.

  The shooting stopped.

  The silence that followed was nearly deafening.

  Sartain was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling sharply. He held his breath and pricked his ears, listening.

  Above the ringing in his head, he could hear soft foot thuds. The two remaining bushwhackers were moving toward the bar, their spurs ringing faintly, broken glass crunching beneath their boots.

  Sartain glanced at the bib-bearded barman. The Cajun held a finger to his lips and then, taking his Henry in one hand, began crawling slowly on hands and
knees toward the end of the bar nearest the front of the place. He winced with the effort of trying to move as quickly as he could while also trying to make little noise and not give away his position.

  “Hey, boyo,” said the Irishman, the man’s voice cleaving the room’s heavy silence. “Where are ya, boyo?” Grit continued crunching softly under slow-stepping boots. “Why don’t you just come out of there now? Make this a whole lot easier on all of us . . .”

  Sartain gained the end of the bar. He peered around the corner toward the main drinking hall. He could see none of the men from this vantage.

  When he slid his gaze around the bar’s front corner, he saw them just as the Irishman, apparently anticipating Sartain’s move, swung his two pistols in his direction.

  The Cajun jerked his head back around the bar’s front corner as the Irishman’s pistols thundered, the slugs loudly hammering the corner of the bar and flinging slivers in all directions. After the Irishman’s first two shots, Sartain bounded off his boot heels and launched himself into a dive straight out into the main drinking hall.

  He hit the floor on his left shoulder and hip, firing the Henry over his belly.

  Boom! Boom-Boom! Boom-Boom! Boom!

  As Sartain pumped and fired, pumped and fired, he watched the gunmen twist around and holler and fly back, screaming, shooting their pistols into the ceiling or into the front of the bar or the floor. By the time the Cajun’s Henry’s hammer had clicked benignly on an empty chamber, both men were down, writhing and groaning.

  Smoke wafted as thickly as gathering storm clouds.

  One of the writhing men kicked over a chair that fell with a bang, resembling another pistol shot.

  Peering through the smoke, Sartain spied movement on the stairway rising to the second floor at the rear of the room, just beyond the bar. He rolled behind an overturned table as the man on the stairs extended a pistol in one hand. The pistol popped, driving a slug into the far side of the table. Tossing his empty Henry aside, Sartain clawed the LeMat from its holster, thumbed back the hammer, and extended the gun over the rounded edge of the table.